


Count the Stars (Shining in Your Eyes)

by alienor_woods



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Frottage, Marriage of Convenience, Mutual Masturbation, Mutual Pining, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-09-09 23:25:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8917255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alienor_woods/pseuds/alienor_woods
Summary: Clarke asks Bellamy to marry her.  And he agrees with a half-shrug and keeps his word, even when she realizes that they would have to be married for real, a ceremony and all, because the grounders really don’t respond well to being tricked.  They even scrounge up a nice jacket for Bellamy for the day of.  On their wedding day, Abby only frowns a little, Bellamy delivers his vows with convincing confidence, and Clarke doesn’t once mention Octavia.  Even to tell Bellamy that she wished she was there.
Or, Bellamy and Clarke fuck their way into love.





	1. Mistletoe

**Author's Note:**

>  
> 
> Title is from Hozier's cover of Van Morrison's Sweet Thing.
> 
> Don't expect a lot of plot. Expect a lot of smut.

It’s quiet.

 

They’d crashed to Earth in the late summer, peak insect season.  The constant machine hum of the Ark had been replaced by the buzz of mosquitos and the whirr of cicadas.  Now it’s winter, the season of death and death-like sleep, and the only sound inside the dark tent he’s sharing with Clarke is their breathing. 

 

Next to him in the makeshift bed, she exhales heavily through her nose.  Her legs shift under the blankets, then her head on her pillow.  She’s agitated.

 

“It’s not a big deal,” he breathes, breaking the silence.  “We’re never going to see these people again.”  She huffs back at him.  Murphy and Emori are in the tent to their left; Brian and Miller to their right.  The Doah clan is still doing rounds, passing by their row of tents every twenty minutes or so.  Only Roan – a fellow grounder, even if he _is_ Azgeda – has been gifted with a bed under a solid roof, and he’d not seemed particularly eager to push for guest rights for Skaikru, too.

 

Mindful of their neighbors, Clarke’s reply is quiet.  “Do you really feel that way?”

 

“What way?”

 

“That – that I’m more important than you?”

 

Bellamy closes his eyes and sighs.  This is what he gets for trying to make light of what they’d done, make seem less…serious.  The Tomac chief, striving for polite conversation, had asked Bellamy how Skaikru merged families. Bellamy had replied that, normally, the women took the names of their husbands, but _I guess I should take Clarke’s name, since she’s Wanheda and all_.  “It’s not about what I think.  It’s about what’s true.”

 

“It’s _not_ true, you’ve done so much—“

 

“It’s not about you and me,” he interrupts.  His voice is hushed but insistent. “It’s about other people.  You’re Abby’s kid.  And the grounders – you’ll always be Wanheda.  It’s why we had to do this—“ he gestures at their shared tent “--in the first place.”

 

She turns on her side.  “You know I don’t feel like that, right?”

 

He glances over.  The ambient light in the tent shimmers in the whites of her eyes.  “That I should take your name?” It’s a light joke, and she swats his shoulder for it.

 

“No, Bellamy,” she chides, amusement curling at the edges of her voice.  “That I’m more powerful than you, or whatever.  You and me—we’re partners.  We’re equals.”

 

“I know.  After all, even if you are Wanheda, it’s not like you _forced_ me to marry you.” 

 

Nathan speaks up from the other side of the tentcloth.  “Oh my _god._ If you’re going to fuck, skip the foreplay, alright?  Some of us are trying to sleep.”

 

“Kinda hard for them to swivv in their separate twin beds, doncha think?” Murphy chimes in.

 

“Who would sleep separately in this weather?” Clarke mutters under her breath.  “What a waste of body heat.”  Still, she turns back to her other side, grumpy and embarrassed under their pile of blankets.

 

Bellamy taps her socked heel with his toes.  “Night, Clarke.”

 

**

 

It happens like this:

 

The Grounders are so used to violence and death and scrabbling for life among the dark that they don’t care too much about the future arrival of nuclear fallout.  What they do care about, even among all of this, is power and the perception of power. 

 

Overnight, Clarke turns into the most eligible bachelorette in the area.

 

Sons and daughters from any moderately-powerful tribe chief begin arriving at Arkadia, demanding an audience with Wanheda to present their offers of marriage.  The problem is that they also refuse to leave until she grants an audience.  When Clarke is at Arkadia, she has to waste precious time going through the formalities of declining one marriage proposal after another when she could be studying maps and learning about nuclear infrastructure.  And when Clarke is away from Arkadia, the grounders _wait_ until she gets back.

 

It’s out of control and the most ridiculous inconvenience.

 

So, she asks Bellamy to marry her.  And he agrees with a half-shrug and keeps his word, even when she realizes that they would have to be married _for real_ , a ceremony and all, because the grounders really don’t respond well to being tricked.  They even scrounge up a nice jacket for Bellamy for the day of.  On their wedding day, Abby only frowns a little, Bellamy delivers his vows with convincing confidence, and Clarke doesn’t once mention Octavia.

 

Not even to tell Bellamy that she wished she were there.

 

**

 

They’d come to stay with the Doah clan to visit the old university campus in their territory. Roan set it all up through his diplomatic channels, and for once, Bellamy is able to choke down his dislike for the man.  The last few times Bellamy’d gotten his own way into a grounder-occupied area, it had been at gunpoint.  Bellamy doesn’t want to do that anymore.  It’s not just the exhaustion and annoyance of it; he’s tired of the glares and the spite.  Now Roan is the one who bears all of the suspicion and dislike for aiding and abetting skaikru’s mission.  Bellamy is fine with that.

 

Their days are spent in dusty rooms filled with books and scraps of paper.  Raven and Monty are the brains of this part of the operation.  They speak to each other in half-sentences and grunts while they pore over schematics and textbooks and take notes.  Clarke follows along well enough, having grown up with Jake Griffin bringing his work home.  Emori decodes the catalog system for them—thanks to her days as a scavenger on other campuses—and she and Murphy satisfy their share of the burden by tracking down the various alphanumerically coded tomes needed.  The rest of them, Bellamy included, serve as note-jotters and second-readers and searchers-out of the _this might be interesting?_ parts of books and maps.

 

Bellamy hates it.  The numbers make his head hurt, the tiny text swims across his eyes, and he has weird dreams about splitting atoms with the axe he’d carried at the dropship.  The strangeness of his dreams are compounded by waking up next to Clarke, all mussed blonde curls and snores and drool and nothing at all like the composed girl he sits next to all day long. 

 

They’ve been married a little while now, maybe a week.  He’s finally getting used to the little twitches she makes when she finally drifts to sleep and taking a knee to the kidney now and then.  Once, he’s wakes up with his forearm settled in the curve of her waist and her hair crinkling under his cheek.  Another morning, he awakens with nothing but with pins and needles in his arm and the sliver of a memory of scratchy wool socks between his ankles.  

 

The Doah tribe feasts them on their last night.  There’s venison and dried fruit, mulled wine and bubbly cider, and a sweet bread that melts on their tongues.  The tribespeople are in a good mood, too.  Not only is skaikru leaving in the morning, but skaikru had also been helpful during their stay.  Clarke had played traveling doctor when asked and the guys had helped raise a barn the evening before.  Bellamy likes to think that the Doah tribe doesn’t see their visit as _all_ bad.

 

The tables are moved away after dinner and floor cushions are brought in for the after-dinner socializing.  A traveling bard sets up near the hearth with his guitar and starts half-singing a version of Beowulf.  Emori is fascinated by it, and Murphy begrudgingly joins her.  He had to read it on the Ark, they all did, but he doesn’t say that out loud.

 

After a goblet of wine and another round of tiny bits of food served on large platters, Raven points up at something over the hearth.  “What’s that?” she asks the chief, her accent rough.  It’s a sprig of leaves with white berries.  Something stirs in Bellamy’s mind, but it doesn’t coalesce into a full thought.

 

“You do not have this?” the chief grins.  “It is mistletoe.  Couples are meant to kiss under it, for good luck.”

 

“Oh!” Clarke perks up.  “Like in the old movies!”

 

She looks over at Bellamy.  He shrugs.  “We didn’t have a movie screen.”  She blinks at him and he feels bad right away.  It’s sometimes hard for her to remember that not everyone had a multi-room suite in Alpha Station.  It’s not her fault, of course.  She grew up with it, so she thinks it’s normal.  He gives her a small smile.  “I’m sure you’re right, though.”

 

The chief gestures towards the fireplace.  “Go, go!  You are newlyweds, right?”

 

“Yeah, go get your good luck, kids,” Raven adds, her eyes dancing with mirth.

 

Clarke shakes her head.  Her cheeks start to pinken.  “Oh, no, that’s—it’s not necessary.”

 

Miller asks, lips curving, if Bellamy and Clarke suddenly have an excess of luck.  “I don’t know,” Bellamy replies, “do you and Brian?”

 

But Miller is ready for this.  He swats Brian’s arm and leads him to the mistletoe, where he cups the other boy’s cheeks and presses a kiss to his mouth.  Brian is smiling, too, and he chases Miller’s mouth for one more peck. 

 

A girl has dragged a red-faced boy to the hearth.  She shoos the skaikru couple away, and then waits for the boy to shuffle closer and lean in for a quick kiss.  “It’s just tradition,” the chief assures Clarke with a smile.

 

Bellamy glances at his wife from the corner of his eye.  Clarke’s mouth has started to thin out into that line that he knows so well.  She’s made a decision, and he just has to wait for her to tell him what it is. 

 

He doesn’t have to wait long.  When the conversation turns to something else, taking the attention off of the two of them, Clarke leans over.  “C’mon,” she mutters.  “Let’s just go do it quick.”

 

“If you don’t want to kiss me, just say so,” he teases, letting her push at his back while he steps carefully out of their circle of pillows and goblets.  Harper calls out for Clarke to _lay it on Bellamy_ , and Clarke huffs and pushes at Bellamy again.  “I’m going as fast as I can!”

 

She looks like she’s going to battle by the time they’re facing each other under the mistletoe.  The fire crackles beside them and makes Clarke’s hair go all orangey-red.  “Just like the wedding,” she instructs him, practically whispering.  “Short and sweet.”

 

Bellamy urges her closer with fingers soft on her elbows.  “I know how to kiss in public, thanks.  Smile, Clarke.  We’re happy, remember?”  The smile she gives him is dry and amused.  His own smile shifts into a shape that feels more subdued, more natural.  Her brow smooths, and then he’s closing his eyes and leaning in. 

 

She smells like the soap they’d been given for their stay.  Fresh, clean, new.  Like their kiss at their wedding, her mouth is puckered for him and then goes soft under the pressure of his own.  He curls his hands to fit her elbows in his palms, gives them a squeeze.  He means to be fast, but she bends her arms and sets her hands on his sides and -- _shit --_ he opens his mouth and licks at her lips before he catches himself.  He feels the sharp inhale she takes as much as he hears it, but she doesn’t jerk away.

 

“Sorry,” he breathes when he pulls back.  Her hands still press into the weave of his sweater.

 

She shakes her head.  Her throat bobs with a swallow and her tongue flickers out to lick her lips.  “It’s fine.”  Her eyes drop to his mouth, jump back up to his eyes.  “It’s—don’t worry about it.”

 

She takes his hand to tug him back to the group.    

 

That night, Bellamy dreams of hands all over.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been a while! Remember that this fic diverges after the S3 finale, so it's not S4 compliant.
> 
> Enjoy~

The morning they go back to Arkadia, Roan pisses Raven off at breakfast. A chip on her shoulder now, Raven declares her intention to drive the rover home and demands the keys from Bellamy. The two of  _ them _ bicker the whole way through breaking down their tents. 

 

Clarke grabs Bellamy’s wrist while Raven’s back is turned. Despite his bluster, he stops easily and looks at her from the corner of his eyes. “Just let her,” she says under her breath. His mouth tightens. She pushes on, voice still low. “You want her cooped up in the back like that?”

 

He huffs through his nose and shakes her off, not unkindly. Clarke rolls her eyes when he turns his back to her. She’s figured out that he’s petulant in the mornings. 

 

A minute later, he hears Bellamy bark Raven’s name, and the clink of keys hitting her palm. “Give us a rough ride and I’ll pull ‘em from the ignition myself,” he warns, in that gruff, cocksure tone that had annoyed Clarke so much back during those first days at the dropship.

 

It still bristles her, makes her take a bracing breath and purse her lips as she zips up her pack. But it does something else, too, these days. The way his words get rough around the edges rasps down her spine and curls in her belly. She's felt it before, that tug of desire, of  _ wanting _ him. It’s just...happening with increasing frequency.

 

The goodbye platitudes to the Doah tribe include their priest pressing dots of ash down the center of their foreheads. He walks down the line of the Skaikru delegation, murmuring trigedasleng under his breath, a quiet, robed boy at his side holding the ash bowl for him, brushes their hair back and cups their jaw to hold them in place while he anoints them. He frowns a bit when Emori lifts her bandana to accept the blessing, but Clarke watches Roan tilt his head at the man where Emori can’t see, a warning in his eyes. So the priest clenches his jaw and touches the girl with only the barest brush of his fingertips, barely refrains from wiping them on his clothes when he’s done. 

 

They’d come to the Doah clan across a long stretch of riverbed, making the ride home smooth and quiet once they’ve finished singing along to the track Raven whacks the radiodash into playing. Bryan is riding shotgun, Roan sits as far down the rear bench from Raven as Clarke could get him, sharing with Murphy and Emori, and Clarke serves as the Small Person Buffer between the tall, broad bodies of Miller and Bellamy. Around the time that Miller is explaining the concept of gravitational orbits to Roan, Clarke leans her head back and closes her eyes, and lets herself be rocked to sleep by the rover. 

 

Arkadia’s gate groans and squeals when it opens, jolting Clarke out of her light sleep.  She can't move her legs. She stiffens in panic, and in that split second she realizes it's Bellamy’s hand on the cross of her knees, anchoring them in place against his leg to keep her from sliding off the bench. He feels it, she hears it in the beat of a pause in his sentence. But she’s relaxing already, waking panic gone, and his hand squeezes her knee. She’d slumped into him at some point, her head cradled between the curve of his shoulder and the rover wall. 

 

She wants to go straight to work, meshing in what they learned at the Doah tribe with their research so far. Raven agrees, but Miller and Murphy push back, begging to rest. It’s Roan who settles it. “We all should sleep,” he says, in that gravelly voice Clarke isn’t completely sure isn’t put on. Clarke huffs at him, she’d thought  _ he _ would be on her side, of all of them. He meets her gaze without apology. “If we’re exhausted, we’ll get sloppy. If we get sloppy, we’re dead.”

 

He’s right, and she knows it. She can feel the weight of her fatigue in her eyes, in the crick in her neck and the apathetic way she notes her empty belly. Still, it only increases her frustration, that she’s so  _ human _ with  _ human _ needs, that her shoulders stay hiked up tight the whole way back to the small room she shares with Bellamy, back in the married-couples quarter of the Ark. She doesn’t even know he’s back there, following a bit behind her, until she goes to slam the door and he stops it. The door bounces off of his outstretched palm and back into the room. 

 

“Sorry,” she mutters, embarrassed. He just arches his eyebrow and gives her a shake of his head, amused and unsurprised, flustering her even more. “I just--”

 

“I know,” he interrupts, eyes a little soft over the sharp curve of his smirk. “This isn’t my first rodeo with you.”

 

She laughs drily and sits on the edge of their single spare chair. Bellamy takes her pistol when she hands it over, drops it on top of the dresser, and unbuckles his own holster from around his hips.

 

“Oh,” he says, amused. Clarke looks up from unlacing her boots and sees him peering into their mirror, hand pushing his hair back. “I forgot about this shit.”

 

“It’s not  _ shit, _ ” she snips, even as she wipes at her own forehead with her hand.

 

He rolls his eyes. “You missed it,” he teases her, and leans down to unknot his laces. She frowns at the top of his head and rubs the back of her hand over her forehead again. He glances over when he toes out of his boots, and can’t stop his snicker. “Jesus, Clarke. You have all these big ideas to save the world but can’t even wash your own face.”

 

She kicks her boot at him and he dodges it. “I didn’t have a mirror,” she insists.

 

“Obviously.” He cups her jaw and tilts her face up to his. His hair is still pushed back off his face and Clarke realizes that Bellamy is … very grown up. That boyish fringe always tricks her into believing that they’re of an age, but they’re  _ not. _ He has a man’s face, she remembers, watching him lick his thumb. A man’s jaw. And the hand that holds her chin is big and warm, rough in places where he’s built up callouses and where scratches and cuts are healing. He’s looking at the smudged ash on her forehead, and she wonders what he sees when he looks at her. He wipes his thumb over Clarke’s forehead and his eyes drop down to meet hers, dark and serious. Somewhere, he’d dropped his teasing smile, but she can’t remember when, exactly.

 

“There,” he says, after his thumb has finished its slow, firm passes over her skin. She feels his knuckles drag down over her cheek as he drops his hand, a little purposeful, and he holds her chin for a heartbeat longer, holds her gaze for yet another, and her breath is suddenly high and tight in her chest. “All clean.”

 

She swallows, and clears her throat. “Thanks, Bell.”

 

He backs out of her space so she can stand, and together they strip down to their undergarments. The bed  _ does _ feel amazing under her hands and knees as they climb into it and pull down the covers. Bellamy’s grabbed a book--he likes to read before he sleeps--so she turns to face the wall, giving her eyes as much darkness as she can. As she fluffs her pillows and burrows herself down into the covers, she turns their discoveries over in her head, sure that she’ll take a while to get comfortable and ready to think through some questions before sleep takes her--

 

* * *

 

 

She drifts into waking.

 

It’s dark. She blinks, tries to make temporal sense of what time it is, how long she’s been asleep. Then she hears what must have woken her, harsh breathing and tight, quiet gasps.  _ Bellamy _ .

 

She knows he’s not in the bed beside her when she turns over. His silhouette is in the chair across the room, turned away from the bed now, outlined in warm lamplight. She thinks he’s had news about Octavia, that he’s trying to cover up his crying, so she sleepily gets to her feet to wrap him in a hug.

 

She’s halfway across the room, and chilled into consciousness by the cold floor when she hears the hitch in his breathing again and all of a sudden she gets it.  He’s  _ not crying, not at all. _

 

But by the time it all makes sense to her, she’s already at his elbow, and he’s stilled, body tense.  Just over his shoulder, she sees the head of his cock, shining with precum, peek through the circle of his fingers.  He doesn’t say anything, just swallows and slowly, as though the movement would escape her notice, presses his dick up against his stomach and out of her view.  She can see the faded weave of his sleep shorts, so he must just have the waistband tugged down and out of the way.

 

She should go back to bed.  She should just turn, lie back down, and be able to look him in the eye in the morning.  He’s still breathing quickly, high in his chest; if she leaves  _ now _ , then he can finish--

 

But she steps forward, and again, until her fingertips brush the arm of the chair.  His eyes glow big and dark and hold her gaze as she sinks down onto her heels at his knee.  He says nothing, the muscle in his jaw jumping the only movement he makes for a long moment.  Clarke’s eyes drift from his to the flush in his cheeks, his licked-wet lips, the pinkness across his freckled chest, and the large hand that keeps his cock hidden from her gaze.  His stomach jumps in shaky inhales; she sees how he has his right hand down his shorts to his wrist, the waistband riding high across his spread thighs.

 

She wants to say something--his name, maybe--but the time for words has passed.  She can see it in the dark flit of his eyes over her face and down to the way her shirt has twisted around her shoulders and the pulse of his hips against his hand.  It’s still deep night, a time for quiet and secrets.  

 

So Clarke bends her head and presses her lips to the warm skin of his knee.  He sucks in a breath.  His hand twitches, curls.  She flicks her eyes to his and kisses the outer edge of his patella and runs her palm down his calf.  He lets his breath out in a heavy rush of air through parted lips and finally moves his hand.

 

His dick is a beautiful thing, really.  Not too long, but thick and a decided upward curve that has Clarke’s cunt clenching as soon as she notices it.  She hears her own breath stutter in her chest, and when her eyes follow his hand to his mouth, she sees his eyelashes flutter when the bob of her throat is caught in the emberlight.

 

Re-slicked, his fingers close around the shaft of his cock and give it firm tugs down by the base.  She watches Bellamy’s fingers flicker against the edge of his cockhead, listens to how his breath comes quicker when his thumb plays at his slit.  Precum leaks from it and Clarke pushes down her urge to get closer and taste it.  She slips her hand between her knees and her fingers up the leg of her shorts instead.  

 

Bellamy shifts his other hand and Clarke sees the roll of his knuckles through the fabric of his shorts.  She wants to pull them down, learn how he likes to be cupped and played with, but he’s moving his hand faster now, fisting tighter and closer to the head.  It disappears into his palm again and again, and his breath starts coming in pants.  She lifts her eyes to his face and he’s already looking at her with eyes at half-mast.  She knows, she  _ knows _ , and it makes her wetter, makes her match the speed of her fingers to the pulse of his bicep, until his eyes catch the twitch of her shoulder.  His eyebrows twitch, confused for the half-second it takes him to put two and two together, and then he lets out a single gasp, his stomach contracts, and his cock spurts come up onto his chest while he bites on his lip to keep his moan in his throat.

 

She kisses his quivering thigh, open mouthed with a flick of her tongue.  His hand pumps a final stripe of come across his navel and she slides a finger into herself, just to pretend.  She adds another one and closes her eyes to the fullness of it.  It feels better with his crisp leg hair against her cheek and the sweetness of unexpected jostling that comes with doing this near someone else.

 

She feels the weight of his hand on her head and turns into it.  He’s tucked his dick away and leans forward a bit to urge her to her feet.  Her hand comes out of her shorts, shiny and slick, and he reaches for it. He looks to her face, watching, and she realizes why a half second later. She gasps, Bellamy, and his mouth closes around her fingers, wet heat and suction and  _ fuck  _ he would be so good at giving head. The image of it hits her in a flash -- cups his neck with her other hand, thinking of his wild curls between her thighs.

 

Closer he urges her, until she has to slide a knee onto the seat between his thigh and the arm of the chair.  He’s blocked from the light like this, but she can still see the glimmer of his eyes when he looks up at her.  Only then does he slide her fingers from his mouth and tug her shorts half down her thighs.

 

She can go straight to her cunt like this, leaning her thigh into the edge of the seat and onto her knee and into the steadiness of his hands on her hips.  He keeps the hem of her shirt out of the way like this, crumpled between his palm and her skin.  He’s licked her wetness from her fingers but left some of his own, warm and wet when she parts her folds.  She fucks herself there, straddling her husband’s thigh, one of his warm, strong hands drifting down her flank and up over her ass, thinking of his cock, his fingers, his shoulders under her bracing arm, his eyes, his mouth, head rolling back and moaning when he leans in and nudges one of her shirt-covered breasts with his nose, gives the other the barest brush of a kiss, then the tentative and hot press of his tongue on her nipple--

 

Her climax takes her, and she knows nothing but the way his hands catch her at her waist and hold her steady while she shivers and quakes over him.  He catches her when she starts to collapse, standing and catching her under her thighs to carry her back to the bed.  He lets her fall onto it in a controlled tumble, and then the mattress creaks when he joins her.  He tugs her shorts up; the waistband rasps against her skin.

 

The light is far dimmer now, but her eyes have adjusted enough to know that he’s facing her.  “Sorry,” she whispers. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that. It complicates things, doesn’t it--” 

 

He huffs through his nose.  She feels his fingers settle on her face and then trace along her cheekbone until they find the mole over her lip.  Bellamy shifts forward and replaces his fingers with his mouth, pressing a chaste kiss to it.  “Go to sleep,” he murmurs, and turns onto his back.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For days, they sit beside each other at dinner tables and on stoops, knees and shoulders touching, steadfastly not talking about it. Leaning over and around each other as they follow Raven through boiler rooms, not talking about it. As if not talking about it would keep them from darting glances down shirts and over shoulders. As if it would stop them from brushing their hands over each other’s backs as they pass behind each other, patting knees, tapping shoulders, each touch singing a reminder that it had been real.
> 
> And they’re married, after all. They share a bedroom. They share a life now. And even if that was it, and they didn’t have this heavy history of...whatever this thing is between him and Clarke, even Bellamy knows that it’s only a matter of time before it happens again.

In the morning, the memories first come to Bellamy in such shimmery, half-lit fragments that he thinks it had just been his imagination. Soft light on blonde hair, dark blue eyes, warm skin--all the typical makings of his wet dreams these days. Bellamy yawns and stretches, shamelessly lets the images play through his mind. 

 

But then his brain fills in the missing bits--the cold knot in his stomach when he heard her creep up behind him, the press of her breasts against his cheeks--and he goes still.  _ Her fingers in his mouth, her eyes on his hand on his cock, her knee wedged by his hip _ ...it hadn’t just been a dream.

 

Clarke wakes up a few minutes later, after he’s breathed through the pounding in his ears. Avoiding his eyes and mumbling something about a shower, she slides out of the room. And that’s how it is: they just don’t talk about it. For days, they sit beside each other at dinner tables and on stoops, knees and shoulders touching, steadfastly  _ not _ talking about it. Leaning over and around each other as they follow Raven through boiler rooms,  _ not _ talking about it. As if  _ not _ talking about it would keep them from darting glances down shirts and over shoulders. As if it would stop them from brushing their hands over each other’s backs as they pass behind each other, patting knees, tapping shoulders, each touch singing a reminder that  _ it had been real _ . 

 

And they’re married, after all. They share a bedroom. They share a  _ life _ now. And even if that was it, and they didn’t have this heavy history of...whatever this  _ thing  _ is between him and Clarke, even Bellamy knows that it’s only a matter of time before it happens again.

 

* * *

 

 

He’s snug against a warm, soft body. The curve of a waist cradles his elbow, and his morning erection is pressed sweetly into a woman’s ass. He takes a deep breath of clean girl smell and his dick twitches, friction sending a zing of pleasure through his veins. He lets out a sleepy, happy hum, leaning his hips into the curve of her. She hums back at him, so he tightens arm and rocks up against her properly this time.

 

The pleasure warms him, wakes him, and he finally blinks open his eyes to see blonde curls. Clarke.  _ Clarke _ . “Shit,” he hisses. He unwinds his arm from her waist like he’s burned and rolls away from her. 

 

She shifts to her back and looks at him. “Why’d you stop?” He doesn’t say anything, just rubs his hands down over his face. “Bellamy. Come back.”

 

He looks over at her, takes in her bright blue eyes, the tangled mess of her blonde hair, the peaks of her nipples under her shirt. It’s morning and he’s slumber-warm and she’s  _ so  _ soft, so he rolls back over and buries his nose in her neck, lets his hand palm her breast. She covers his hand with her own and arches up, showing him the pressure she likes. He whispers a curse into the crook of her neck. “What’re we doing here, Clarke?”

 

Her chuckle is low, sweet. “I think that’s obvious.”

 

Bellamy lifts his head and looks down on her. “The wedding--we agreed it was just for show, right? You said you didn’t want to do this--”

 

She shakes her head. “No, I said we didn’t  _ have _ to.” Her fingers pluck nervously at the back of his hand, still curved over her breast. “But, why not? You felt like--do you not want to?”

 

This is some out of body shit, questioning a girl’s interest when she’s holding his hand on her breast. “It’s not that,” he says, and an incredulous laugh escapes him. “Jesus. I just--I’m not gonna just hump you like a pillow, okay?”

 

She giggles. “I didn’t think you were,” she tells him. She lets go of his hand and traces the back of a finger over his lower lip, soft and gentle, and he leans his mouth into it. She smiles at that, slow and sweet, tucks her finger under his chin to guide his mouth to hers for a brush of a kiss. “If I weren’t here, wouldn’t you jerk off right now, anyway?”

 

“Clarke.” He drops his forehead to hers.

 

“I mean it!”

 

“I know you do, that’s the thing.” A smile’s tugging on his mouth. “It’s rude, though. Not to take care of you, too.”

 

“I took care of myself last time, didn’t I?” she asks, and his heart stops, stutters, then roars back to life. His cock, too. It had been settling down, not for Bellamy’s lack of effort, but the sudden memories of Clarke with her hand down between her thighs, her slick fingers in his mouth, her nipples against his tongue, revive it. 

 

He’s so goddamn weak and he can’t help it, doesn’t  _ want _ to help it, and she doesn’t seem to want to help it either, the way she gives a happy hum when he bucks his hips into her. “You can’t say that shit to me,” he warns her, hooking a knee over her thigh to bear down on her. Their blanket tangles a bit, feeds his urgency.

 

“Why?” she asks, goading him on from where she lies under him now, all blonde curls and soft curves, topped off with that small mouth he honestly wants to eat right now. “Because you might do this?”

 

His dick is caught weird in his boxers, the angle keeping him from grinding into her hip. She feels it too, and reaches down to see what’s keeping him so far away and gets her hand down under his waistband. And then his cock is free, bobbing into Clarke’s palm like a magnet. “Oh, fuck,” he gasps, and drops his face into her hair when she gives him a stroke and thumbs the head.

 

She leans her temple to his. “C’mere,” she murmurs, and presses his cock into her side. He shudders and bucks because shit, she put him in a good spot. She sighs, husky in his ear. “C’mon, Bell.”

 

He’s only half listening to her purrs into his ear, his world having shifted quite narrowly to the friction and pressure he’s fucking finally able to get up against. “You in a rush, Clarke?”

 

“I feel like I held you up.”

 

He huffs. “It’s just morning wood.”

 

Her waistband is in the way though, catching in sensitive spots. He scrabbles for it, rising up on his elbow and batting the covers back. She helps shimmy them down a bit, revealing her soft belly. He passes his palm over it and fuck, she’s warm. She giggles. He’s said it aloud. 

 

His dick slips and slides across Clarke’s belly, so smooth, so good, and her hair curls cool ribbons between his fingers. Her hands drift along his sides, sweetly tugging him down against her, like he isn’t already bearing down onto her, slotted together at the thighs like puzzle pieces, feeling their clothes going humid with sweat.

 

“That’s good?” Clarke asks, cupping his neck. “You good like this?”

 

“You know it is,” he chuckles, breathless, warm under her attention. He presses into his elbows to nip and his way to her mouth. She opens her mouth to him, holding his gaze, and lets him brush their mouths against each other. He rolls his hips, her tits sway into his chest, and [he licks into her mouth, deep and thorough.](http://68.media.tumblr.com/c0507e7c05482a89b5fe9a14de483e68/tumblr_inline_nlchnhX4WS1r8l71u.gif)

 

It’s a bit of a blur then, her tongue in his mouth, her hands low on his back, the way she sighs and hums when he can’t help the whine in the back of his throat and the pumping of his hips against her. Her belly dampens with his precome, dripping from the head of his cock, and in a flash of sensory overload, he realizes that  _ holy fuck  _ he’s really got his dick on Clarke right now, that he’s going to come  _ all over her stomach _ . He gasps and shudders, doing just that, distantly aware through the roar of his orgasm of the kisses Clarke presses to his temple.

 

He pushes himself to the side and she goes with him. She squeezes her thighs together around his, where they’re still tangled together. Through the pounding in his ears, he hears her asking, “can I, Bell, please” and his skin zings where her hand slides to his shoulder. “Help me,” she urges him, shifting her weight until he gets the drift.

 

“You want up here?” He asks, tongue still thick in his mouth, not sure yet of her destination. Then he feels it, the grind of her hot center on his thigh. His mind clears, and he’s back in it. “Oh, yeah,” he says, settling onto his back. “C’mon then.”

 

Her shirt’s caught under one breast, her pants rucked down low. She’s already primed, spreading her knees out to get low and close to the line of his thigh and when she starts fucking herself on him, she takes no prisoners.

 

Barely a few seconds in and she’s tossing her head back, biting her lip to keep her moans at bay, her hips swiveling a tight, mean circuit that has him grabbing onto her thigh for the ride. “You’re that close? You should’ve told me,” he says, watching her face screw up in pleasure. The crotch of her pants is already soaked; she’d been turned on by that, then. “I’d’ve gotten you off by now.”

 

“I wanted you to finish,” she insists. Her eyes glaze a bit, and she shudders, her hips slowing suddenly, and her mouth drops open.

 

“That working good for you?” Bellamy rumbles, hands stroking over her ass, around her hips. She drops forward over him, plants her hands by his ears and drags her cunt forward and back, forward and back, slow and firm, gasping until he can’t take it anymore. 

 

Her breasts are right there, swaying behind her loose sleep shirt. That other night, he’d been afraid that if he’d talked to her, touched her, it would have broken the spell. He’s not worried about that now, not with how his come slides messily between his palm and her skin. Not when she’s devolving into little grunts and sighs, and that breathy laugh she keeps giving.

 

Her shirt already swings loose around her waist, given how she’s bent forward. He plays with the hem of it, feels the flex and pull of her waist as she works herself. His fingers brush her skin and she leans down to kiss him. “Please, Bell’my,” she whispers. He gives her his tongue to suck on, then slides his hands up under her shirt to cover her breasts. It’s what she needs, it seems, leans into his hands and his mouth, picks a new pattern, quick and purposeful, such a change that Bellamy realizes that she’s been drawing this out, letting herself enjoy the climb. 

 

“Not a bad way to wake up, huh?” he can’t help himself saying. “Fucking your husband?”

 

Clarke’s eyes are hazy with lust and the edge of her orgasm. “You fucked your wife, first,” she reminds him.

 

“Yeah, I did, didn’t I?” She nods and he plucks at a nipple until her head rolls down in a waterfall of blonde. “Did you like it?”

 

“Yes,” she whines. Her hand falls atop his over her shirt, holding his palm to her breast. “ _ Yes _ , Bellamy, I liked it. I liked it so much.”

 

She’s so close. He pulls one hand free and brushes her hair away, cards his fingers into it so he can drag their mouths together again. “You wanna do it again?” he whispers. She nods, hiccuping into his mouth, her hips getting tighter, preciser. Her eyes are half-lidded, her lips bitten swollen and  _ fuck _ he wants to stay in this bed with her forever. “You wanna fuck me again sometime?”

 

“For real,” she breathes. “Can I fuck you for real?”

 

He can’t answer because he’s kissing her, hard, all tongue and teeth and something sweet, like truth, and she’s coming in a long sob into his mouth. “You’re so hot, Clarke,” he tells her, over and over again, as she falls to the bed beside him. “And so fucking pretty.”

 

She grabs his ears and tugs him down to kiss her in sweet passes, slow and shallow in her afterglow. He pets his hand over her hair, over her neck, over her breasts and soft nipples until she giggles and he snickers back at her. He’s sticky with sweat, and she’s sticky with his come drying on her skin (he might have slid his hand under her shirt to feel, and she might have sighed at his touch) 

 

“I…” she starts, blinking and looking away, then back. “I wasn’t just saying that.”

 

“Saying what?” he asks, matching her hushed tone.

 

Her mouth pulls to the side. She runs her finger along his clavicle. “I want to fuck you for real,” she admits, only dragging her eyes back to his when she’s done talking. And he doesn’t quite know what to think other than, well….

 

_ Fuck. _


	4. Chapter 4

Clarke never sleeps well in Polis. Even when she’d been Lexa’s…guest, she had tossed and turned through the nights, never getting quite comfortable enough. She feels that way tonight. Antsy. Unable to drift off. The other side of the bed lies empty, a void nagging at her back.

 

 _When had she started keeping a side open_?

 

She sighs and rolls over.

 

The threadbare sheets have been darned and patched in places. The print is faded from years of being dried in the sunlight, but Clarke can make out the outlines of the vague paisley. She fiddles with a rip in the seam of Bellamy’s pillow. He’s on guard duty for the night and it’ll be hours before he’ll be back to sleep.

 

Sleep, or…do other things.

 

_I want to fuck you, for real._

 

She shivers and presses her face into his pillow. It smells like pine soap and gun oil, like _Bellamy_.

 

They hadn’t yet, though. Not _the full banana republic_ , as Finn had called it, once upon a time. It had made her giggle then, and it makes her giggle now.

 

No, they hadn’t fucked. But twice…twice they had touched each other, held each other, helped each other out. The first time had been late at night, after a long shift in Arkadia’s clinic. She’d tried to be quiet coming home, tiptoed carefully through the dark bedroom to slide between the sheets. But Bellamy had stirred anyway and replied to her hushed apologies with slow kisses up her neck and the promising weight of his hand on her breast. Soon, she was writhing against him, his fingers between her thighs and his lips on her ear. Clarke had shuddered apart on his hand, and then she’d rolled into him and swiped kisses across his chest while she jerked him off. At the last minute, she’d remembered the way he’d touched himself that night in the chair. She’d reached down and cupped his balls and he’d gasped into her hair while his hips jerked with his release. He’d tugged her mouth back to his and, covering her hand with his, showed her that he likes to be stroked through his orgasm. In the moonlight coming through their coveted single window, they’d been quite a sight, their fingers laced together over his cock, wet with her spit and his come, pumping down towards his flexing hips and thatch of his dark hair and back up to wring every last pearl from the slit in the head. After, they made out for while, deep and filthy and quiet, and fell into limbs-tangled sleep before their afterglows fully faded.

 

They’d stayed exhaustedly platonic for several days after that, until a planning summit at Becca’s compound. She’d just finished toweling off after a long hot shower, and she’d stepped back into their room to find Bellamy standing shirtless at the foot of their bed, a change of clothes for a game of pick-up basketball laid out on the comforter. He’d looked at her, all backlit and damp and terry-wrapped. And she’d looked at him, all freckles and smooth skin and tousled hair. She’d dropped her towel, and he’d reached out for her, and they’d kissed, sighed, and kissed again. He’d sucked on her tongue and buried his face in her chest, and she’d run her hands around his trim waist and licked her way down his torso. His belly had flexed and rolled under her mouth, her unstoppered hunger wrenching needy sounds from his chest. Together, they’d batted his pants open and Clarke took him into her mouth in one of the quickest, sloppiest, most satisfying blowjobs of her life. Swallowing has always struck Clarke as the tidiest option, but she doesn’t mind the way guys watch her while she does it. Bellamy’s not so different, and he’d thumbed her bobbing throat with soft eyes and his bottom lip caught between his teeth.

 

She’d be lying if she said she hadn’t ever thought about him like this before they were married. But now, it’s not just fantasy, wishful thinking, guessing at what it might be like. No: now, she _knows_ what noises he makes. Low groans, breathless whines, huffing sighs, whispers of _Clarke_ and _like that_ and _please._  She closes her eyes, but the sound of him still echos in her mind.

 

Throwing back her covers, Clarke gets to her feet. A walk. That’s what she needs.

 

* * *

 

Arkadia’s delegation has been put on the tenth floor, below the throne room, but above a hastily-built radiation clinic and the Coalition’s tower barracks. It’s not that they’re worried about grounder civilians. Just—until they make a decision, the less that ordinary people know, the better. Besides, explaining to a mother how the air is causing her child’s burns through a language barrier is hard enough, so translating nuclear physics and predictive meteorology is on the back burner for the moment.

 

The hallway is quiet. Other than murmuring in Murphy and Emori’s room, and a sliver of light shining under Monty and Harper’s door, everyone seems to be asleep. Clarke tucks her hands into the kangaroo pocket of Bellamy’s sweater and takes her time wandering along the walls. They’re covered in graffiti, layers of it. Generations of grounders talking to the walls, talking to each other, and sometimes, talking to history.

 

There’s a big bubbled tag next to her mom’s door, the neon paint gone to dust and flakes, showing it’s 21st Century age. Clarke had seen Kane slip in there earlier, and she was decidedly not thinking about it. Particularly since it only makes her mind slide dangerously back to the reason why she’d left her own bedroom.

 

Near an exit door, blocky blue letters comfort whatever weary eyes might fall upon it: YOU ARE NOT ALONE. Once upon a time, a father had left a desperately scribbled message for her daughter: _Naomi — Find me at Luke’s. I love you down to your toes. Dad_. Someone has come behind Naomi’s father and framed out the message with large flower petals, not shying away from covering parts of nearby tags with the petals’ wide sprawl. The flower petals are orange—the same rusty color Clarke had been stuck with when she’d been alone for months in the woods.

 

And here and there, pictograms of the Commanders, their wars with nearby kings and queens, all of them marked not by written names, but by symbols. This paint is the brightest and clearest, the hall’s graffiti starting its shift towards hieroglyphic-like images as written English slid into spoken _trigedasleng_. According to Lincoln, many early grounder autocrats had burned the city’s libraries, and his own literacy a rare exception.

 

Voices catch her attention. One of them is Bellamy’s, so she heads towards him, drawn closer by his low timbre. Only just as she’s rounding the corner does she place the other speaker’s voice: Echo kom Azgeda.

 

Seeing Clarke, the Azgedan spy snaps her mouth shut. Bellamy looks back over his shoulder. “Clarke.” He pivots towards her, and the torchlight bounces off of his rifle.

 

Clarke glances between the two of them. “I…heard voices.”

 

“It’s nothing,” Bellamy says, at the same time that Echo says, “you shouldn’t be out of your quarters so late at night, wanheda.”

 

Annoyance overcomes her surprise and Clarke narrows her eyes. “I was under the impression that Azgeda was barred from this floor after dusk.”

 

“I asked her to meet me,” Bellamy admits, voice low. Clarke gives him a questioning look, but he skips his eyes away from hers and doesn’t say any more. Echo watches them with a cat-like curiosity and, quite obviously, without any intention of bowing out and letting Clarke speak to her husband.

 

Bellamy doesn’t seem keen to ask Echo for the same, and that’s more like a punch to the gut than finding them together like this in the first place.

 

Clarke swallows. “Well. I’m sorry for interrupting.”

 

She turns on her heel and heads back the way she came. What had she been thinking? That playing house with Bellamy and fooling around a few times meant that they were…together? Some sort of _couple_ that doesn’t keep secrets from each other?

 

Maybe she’s been misreading him this whole time.

 

Back in their room, Clarke flops into bed and pulls the covers to her shoulders. Morning would be here soon, and if she goes to sleep now, she can wake up in the morning and pretend that this all had just been a bad dream.

 

* * *

 

The mattress creaks and pitches.

 

 _Shh_ , he says. _It’s me_.

 

She turns her face away from him, sending his soft seeking mouth skating over her cheek. He sighs. Presses his forehead to her temple. There’s a reason she doesn’t want him, but

               she can’t

                                                          quite remember

                                                                                                     what it is.

Besides, she likes the weight of his arm across her stomach. His body next to hers. His breath in her hair.

 

She turns into him.

 

And sleeps.

 


	5. Chapter 5

The next day is crammed with meetings. A bleary-eyed breakfast is followed by a droning explanation of the effect of nuclear fallout on seismic activity, after which three messengers arrive for a scheduled audience with skaikru’s medical team. Radiation burns have started to appear on the bodies of the sick and elderly, and the messengers present their healers’ drawings and half-legible notes. For lunch, Clarke hastily shoves a bowl of soup into her mouth. It’s barely down her gullet before she has to head off to a summit session headed by Raven, Jasper, and Monty, which breaks down the minute changes in diminishing returns of agrarian value to elevation.

 

Bellamy had still been in bed when she’d left that morning, belly down and snoring softly into his pillow. He hadn’t stirred in the slightest while she had moved around the room getting ready, and she had hoped that sleep would wear off whatever strange edge had set into his shoulders over the last few days. But he shows up ten minutes late with messy hair and mismatched clothes, and he sits through through Jasper’s presentation on vertical gardening at high altitudes with crossed arms and a surly expression. She leans over and asks him if he’s alright, and he grunts back that he’s fine. Nothing else. Just “ _fine_.” And without even a _glance_ in her direction.

 

Clarke slumps back in her chair and returns her attention to Raven’s _enthralling_ breakdown of their cable and PVC pipe inventory.

 

So later, when she and Roan are looking over some of the maps found in the tower’s state archives ( _thank you, Becca Pramheda)_ , and Roan leans over her shoulder so closely that she can feel the heat of his body, the swing of his hair, Clarke doesn’t step away the way she’s been doing ever since that night she shuffled up behind Bellamy with a yawn in her throat and sleep still in her eyes. Roan’s not as tall as Bellamy, but he’s broader. Sharper, too, in a queer way that Clarke could see herself liking after a drink or two. She’s not an idiot—she’s seen the way Roan looks at her. He wants to kiss her, fuck her, even if he doesn’t realize it himself.

 

At least someone does.

 

Movement catches her eye. Bellamy’s watching her and Roan from the other side of the room, their closeness suddenly distracting from his conversation with Jasper and Monty. Confusion swims behind his eyes, then suspicion. It tightens the skin around his eyes and thins the line of his mouth. Clarke meets his gaze and lifts her chin. And if there’s something a little bitter in it, a little challenging in it, well--maybe he deserves it.

 

* * *

 

 

It all comes to a head after dinner, when Harper starts to gossip about _Murphy and Emori_ and what all she _heard_ the night before. Clarke exaggerates a gag and bows out, but it’s not because of some holier-than-thou lack of voyeuristic interest. Murphy and Emori are a strange pair, and they seem to genuinely enjoy each other’s company, and yeah, it’s…weird? But the names of the mountains have started to run together in her mind, and she needs some alone time with the maps to remind herself of them. Jasper lets her go only after he refills her flagon of apple ale, and she returns to the conference room in which they’d had their meeting.

 

For a half-hour, it’s just Clarke and the maps and her notes and her beer. She measures distances and counts rings and scratches elevations and names on the paper she tears from the back of an old chemistry textbook. Then the door opens without a knock, making her jump.

 

“You could have knocked,” she grumbles at Bellamy.

 

“Harper said you’d come up here, but…” he has the decency to look half-abashed for doubting their friend. “She’s already at least one sheet to the wind.”

 

He gives her a smile. She doesn’t return it. “Well. I’m here,” she tells him, turning back to her work. He hovers in the doorway. “In or out, Bellamy.”

 

He chooses in, and closes the door behind him. He shoots her some banal questions, and she gives him banal answers, until he finally lapses into silence and she can get back to studying. She reviews the scout’s reports, compares them to Jasper’s agrarian models, and checks those against Raven’s calculations, until it all starts to make sense to her.

 

She pushes back from her place and walks around to the other side of the table, looking for Monty’s meteorological reports. “What’re you working on?” she asks Bellamy, who has a book propped up in his lap.

 

“Uh, I’m actually…just reading.”

 

“I hope it’s something important.”

 

“Not really.” He clears his throat and tosses the book on top of the table. _A Game of Thrones,_ by George R.R. Martin. She rolls her eyes. Heroic fantasy. Why is she not surprised? Bellamy pushes to his feet and sidles up behind her. His hands drop to her shoulders. “Wanna take a break?” he asks, voice pitched low and giving her a squeeze. “Fool around a bit?”

 

“No.” Clarke flips to the next page of Monty’s predictive reports. “I’m meeting Raven for late-call and I want to finish reading these before then.”

 

“It’s what, eight-o’clock? We’ve got time.” He runs a hand down her side, around her thigh, up her inseam. Against her better judgment, a wisp of heat sparks to life in her belly. “C’mon, Clarke,” he husks.

 

The image of Bellamy and Echo standing together last night flits through her brain. She remembers how he’d looked away from her, jaw clenched against her questioning gaze, and she twists her head away from him. “Hot and cold much lately?” Instead of answering, he kisses her ear, then the soft skin of her neck. “Bellamy, be serious. I’m trying to work.”

 

This isn’t private, after all. It’s an open conference room on a public floor. Anyone could walk in. Still, Bellamy’s hand creeps around her waist, toys with the button of her pants. “I am being serious,” he says, slipping his hand lower to cup her through her pants. “Let me get you off. You deserve it.”

 

He’s never said anything like that to her before. Clarke’s breath stutters from her chest. He’s solid against her back, teasingly insistent down between her thighs, and the warm pressure feels _so good._ Monty’s words swim on the page before her as Bellamy’s mouth skates back up her throat and she tries to refocus her eyes by sheer force of will alone. “C’mon, Bellamy,” she hisses, bucking her hips backwards, trying to shake him off.

 

But it just makes him tighten his grip and he pulls her back against against him. His fingers continue their devilish work against the seam of her pants. “C’mon, Clarke,” he parrots back, low and raspy and goading in her ear. His hands are greedy, needy, making her breasts heavy and hungry for touch, and she drops her hand to pluck at his wrist. His other hand comes around, quick as lightning, and snatches her hand away.

 

Her head falls back and her hips snap forward, seeking friction against his fingers. “Fuck—”

 

“—Yeah, let’s fuck.” His voice licks a flame down her spine. “We’ll be quick, huh?”

 

“ _Fine_.” She twists in his arms and pulls his mouth to hers. He’s sharp from the start, sucking and nipping at her mouth like he’s never been before. It gets her gasping and clutching at his hair, and she lets him crowd her against the edge of the table and hike her thigh over his hip. For a long moment, all she knows is his mouth pulling hers, his tongue sliding along hers, his hand cupped around her neck to hold her mouth to his even when she bites down on his lip, his low groan vibrating through her when she rolls her hips against his.

 

“You could have done this last night, you know, if you hadn’t been so busy talking with _Echo_ —”

 

“Shh.” He tugs on her hair, sharply. It’s just once, but it’s strong enough to make her eyes tingle and arousal smothers the rest of the words on her tongue. She melts into him, trusting him to keep her mouth right where he wants it. His other hand cups her throat before sliding down to get under the hem of her shirt. “You seriously think I wanted to hang out with _her_?”

 

“I thought—”

 

“I know what you thought,” he says, pulling her head back so he can look her in the eyes before pressing his mouth back to hers. He’s trying to kiss her and apologize at the same time and his mumbled entreaties spill across her lips and tongue. “I’m so sorry, babe. Lemme make it up to you, huh? Can I show you how sorry I am?” And how can she say no to that? Still, she doesn’t hold back when sets her nails into his skin and rakes them down hard enough to make him gasp.

 

“You look so fucking good in my clothes, Clarke,” he tells her, letting her pull their bellies together. It takes her a minute to figure out what he means--that she’d pulled on his old highschool sweater the night before and had been wearing it when she’d stumbled across him in the hallway. She grins and whispers something slick about the Factory Station Conquerors and their poor score card and he chuckles and nips at her mouth. “You keep wearing that sweater and Alpha Station can beat us all week long.”

 

Quickly, they strip Clarke’s tops off and Bellamy drops onto his heels to nose at her stomach. Want strikes her with a low, hot throb.

 

“Oh, please,” Clarke begs. She pushes his bangs back so she can watch him mouth at the rises of her hipbones. “Please, Bellamy.”

 

He hums. The vibration sends her scrambling for the edge of the table. “Oh, _now_ you wanna get off?” he teases her. In a series of yanks and jerks, Bellamy makes quick work of her button and zipper and pulls her pants down. The fabric tangles and holds her fast at the ankles. The restraint is awkward, but when Bellamy tongues at one of her hip crests and slides his hands around her thighs, desire and arousal sing through her veins and drown out everything else.

 

The first touch of his mouth is a sucking kiss, then a flat drag of his tongue over her folds to get the lay of the land. She gasps and her hips buck and he crowds her back against the table with those wide shoulders of his. Between the edge of the sturdy table and his hot, attentive mouth, her thighs tremble and leave her grappling  for sturdy handholds.

 

He tightens his hold on her thigh, asks her if she’s still good. She arches her hips towards him, desperate for his mouth. “Lick me,” she demands.

 

Without even a chuckle at her broken whine, he buries his face back in the tight spot between her legs. He’s as greedy for this as she is, sucking and licking and searching for the folds and valleys of her. She rocks into his mouth, relishes the irregular bump and grind of his chin and nose against the margins of her cunt and how they set her limbs to twitching. He takes it like a champ, rides the undulations of her hips and looks up at her obligingly when she begs for his eyes.

 

“Fuck me after this?” she asks, her breath high in her throat and his curls bursting from between her fingers. “Hey, Bellamy, you wanna fuck me after this?”

 

He bites a curse into her thigh then pulls back up, finagling an arm around her thigh to slip a few fingers into her. She cries out and rolls back onto his fingers, guides his tongue to sit on her clit just right, babbles at him to fuck her, make her come, until her knees quiver and start to buckle, and then it’s a scramble to her peak, Bellamy licking and sucking and keeping her thighs wrested obscenely open for his face. And then she feels it, the tightening, the warming, the tingling, and her limbs curl in on her and he heaves her back again with his shoulders and that’s it, she’s coming, and coming harder than she has in months.

 

Everything is twitchy and shivery and sparkly, and the table is cool and smooth under her back. When Bellamy grabs her hips and rolls her to her belly, she goes bonelessly. His palms stroke down her back, over her hips. She feels him mouth at the dimples in her low back right before he gives her flank a firm slap. “You look good like this,” he says, tugging her back and up onto the balls of her feet.

 

Clarke hums, relaxed. “I feel good like this.” She stretches her arms out across the tabletop and enjoys the way the stretch exaggerates the arch of her back and makes Bellamy sigh her name. She hears his pants drop and has to wait a long agonizing moment for him to take his stance behind her. [Then he’s pressing into her, thick and warm](https://68.media.tumblr.com/7bb970c7130bf76e0e6d6048134acbb0/tumblr_nzmq27xNrc1ummvczo1_400.gif), and that’s all she cares about: the feel of him inside of her, sliding slow and deep, filling her up until she thinks she can feel him in her fucking _throat_ , and how he laughgasps when she tells him that, and how the first rocks of his hips are edged with deliciously excessive friction until he gets slicked up right and he can get going faster, smoother.

 

He fists her hair and pulls her up onto her hands. “C’m’up here,” he grunts into her ear. She gasps at the sting in her scalp, at how he doesn’t even slow down, just works a line of kisses up the tight curve of her neck he’s made, smooths his free palm over her belly and up to toy with one of her breasts. She can’t seem to get her limbs to work quite right and she’s barely able to keep a hand braced against the table.

 

“You need me to hold you up?” he teases her, husky and breathless. “You feeling that good?”

 

“ _Yes_ ,” she whines. Everything about him is warm and firm and strong—his fingers tugging at her nipple, his arm around her waist, his chest against her back. She twists her head back to search out his mouth, shuddering at the frissions of pleasure that race under her skin with every flex of his hips.

 

“Shit.” He lets go of her hair to brace himself against the table. It jostles her tighter between him and the table, shortens up her wiggle room and sends a dangerous thrill through her chest. She can’t move forward or backwards too much, has to just _take him_ the way he’s giving it to her. And he’s giving it to her hard and swift and rough, just like she wants it, needs it, sharp corners bruising her thighs and rough breaths tickling her ear.

 

“Holy fuck,” she hears him breathe. “So good. Is it always gonna be this good?”

 

“Please. _Please_ , Bellamy.”

 

“You always gonna feel this good?”

 

“Yes—”

 

“—this good?”

 

“—yes—please—”

 

He kisses her, wet and sloppy, and she sucks on his tongue and claps a hand over his where it sits on her breast. He breaks away and pulls his cock free from her cunt with a groaned _fuck, oh fuck, Clarke, I’m gonna come._ His last few thrusts are between her slick, closed thighs. When she reaches down to feel where the head of him slides just below her damp curls, he finally comes in spurts that arc through her fingers and onto the floor below the conference table. He shakes against her back and pets her shoulders, her shoulders, her belly with grateful, clumsy passes.

 

Once he’s caught his breath, he spins her around. Cupping her cheeks, he kisses her slow and deep, his thumbs tracing the arcs of her cheekbones. “You okay?” he whispers, their faces so close that his eyes flicker back and forth between hers.

 

“I’m okay.” Clarke chafes her palms up and down his sides while he strokes her hair and presses kisses to her forehead, her cheek, and her mouth again. The reassuring caresses are new, and different, and they don’t stop even when Bellamy stops shivering from orgasm aftershocks.

 

Bellamy might be keeping a secret from her, but this, _this_ is honesty.

 

* * *

 

They take their standing radio call with Arkadia after lunch the following day. Tucked in among the patient numbers, perimeter report, and agricultural yields is a tiny nugget of information that jerks Clarke’s nose out of her notes.

 

“What was that?” she demands, interrupting Captain Miller’s crackling voice.

 

“You mean Octavia Blake?” the captain’s voice crackles. “Yeah, she’s out on that oil rig with Luna kom Floukru. Scouts made contact three days ago, thanks to Lincoln’s directions.”

 

Clarke doesn’t remember the rest of the call. Her body hums with barely-controlled excitement until Kane and her mom sign off. She immediately starts to shuffle her papers together. “I’ve got to find Bellamy.”

 

“You know we’re short-staffed in the clinic,” Abby frowns. “Marcus, you don’t mind telling Bellamy about his sister, do you?”

 

Already on his way to the door, papers tucked haphazardly under his elbows, Kane shrugs and runs his fingers through his hair. “Sure, sure. I’ll do that.”

 

“Mom—”

 

“To the clinic, Clarke. Octavia will still be safe at dinnertime.”

 

Clarke scowls, but goes anyway. She whiles away her evening like she did her morning, elbow deep in radiation burns and wound dressings. The radio’s news fades into to the jumbled recesses of her mind as she calculates medication dosages and assembles suture packets.

 

She trudges back to their quarters after dinner, taking down her braid and scratching at her scalp. Bellamy is already in bed, or, rather, is _still_ in bed from the previous night’s rounds, _A Game of Thrones_ balanced open on his bare chest. He looks so handsome now, sleep-mussed curls falling over his brow and one arm curled up behind his head in a way that shows off the tone of his shoulder and bicep.

 

She sidles up beside him and sinks her fingers into his hair. “Hey, you,” she breathes against his cheek. He hums back at her, presses obligingly into her lips, but doesn’t reply.

 

Once again, he’s closed himself off from her. She asks how his day has been, how his book is going, and he gives her short, disinterested replies. She’d forgive him if he was really into his book, but the whole time that it takes for her to change into her sleeping clothes, brush her hair, and rinse her mouth and face, Bellamy doesn’t turn a single page. Even when she goes quiet to finish up her last moments of getting ready for bed, he doesn’t rustle a page.

 

“Bellamy.” She sits on the edge of the mattress beside him, tucking her foot up under her. “What’s going on?”

 

Now he turns the page, pretending to read. Frustrated, Clarke snatches the book from him. “Hey!” he bursts out, but without much heat. “Clarke—”

 

“I’m holding your spot,” she tells him, tilting her wrist to show him that she’s tucked her finger between the pages. “Why are you acting so weird?”

 

“Weird?” Bellamy asks. “What do you mean?”

 

Clarke makes a frustrated sound, brandishing the book between them. “Just—weird. The sex yesterday—”

 

He furrows his brow, suddenly serious. “You thought the sex was weird?”

 

“Not like _that_. I liked the sex.” Her cheeks flush. A small laugh slips through her lips. She ducks her head, letting her blonde curls fall across her cheek and hide her eyes. In the abashed quiet after her confession, Bellamy creeps his fingers across the sheets and blankets to brush against the tips of her own. Her wedding ring is only the slightest bit loose below her knuckle; he walks his fingers between hers to thumb at it, roll it around her finger between his own. Clarke swallows. “You’ve just been so…agitated. What’s bothering you? Is it anything I can help you with?”

 

Bellamy smiles sadly at her. He turns her hand in his own and traces the lines of her palm. He lifts it and presses a kiss to the middle of it. “You always want to help, don’t you?” he asks, murmuring the words into her skin.

 

“Of course.” She strokes her thumb over the curve of his mouth. “I would do anything for you, Bellamy.”

 

He kisses her palm again and closes his eyes. “I asked Echo to look for Octavia. The other night--she was telling me that she hasn’t seen her. Her contacts haven’t seen her. She doesn’t know where she is. I don’t know…” Bellamy pauses to take a shuddering breath, “I don’t know where my little sister is.”

 

“Oh,” Clarke sighs. “Oh, _Bellamy_.” She brings her other hand up to cup his cheeks and leans in to kiss him. “I thought you knew. Bellamy, I thought you _knew_.”

 

“Knew what?” he asks, his soft mouth taking her comforting, apologetic kisses.

 

“The radio call with Arkadia today. Kane was supposed to tell you.” Clarke presses her forehead to his. “Octavia’s with Luna, Bellamy. Echo couldn’t find her because she’s on Luna’s rig.”

 


	6. Chapter 6

 

 

Floukru greets Bellamy and Clarke with far greater pomp and circumstance than the last time they’d sought them out. After all, the emissaries from skaikru are here now to guide them all to safety, not to force their leader into a fight in which they have no part.

 

Clarke goes through the stilted greetings with ease and patience, but Bellamy is antsy. He scans the crowd around them for his sister’s dark hair and button nose, but doesn’t see her among the grounders on the oil rig platform.

 

“Where is Octavia Blake?” he asks at the first break in Luna and Clarke’s conversation.

 

“At sea,” Luna replies. “Fishing.”

 

Bellamy looks out across the rig’s platform to where it ends abruptly — no guardrails, no warnings. Beyond the drop off, the ocean spreads across the horizon, dark and limitless. “She’s out there?”

 

Luna gives him a wry grin. “Your sister is quite good, you know. She likes to man the rudder.”

 

That much, at least, is believable.

 

Still, her absence gnaws at him through the rest of the day, and he finds himself looking out at the water at every opportunity for any sign of a ship. Any sign of Octavia. Of his little sister. The hour they spend in the innermost chambers of Luna’s apartments are the worst. There aren’t any windows, and he can’t hear what’s going on outside, either. If he weren’t needed to explain the perimeter and security at the planned encampments, he’d have up and left by now. Even as it is, his anxiety shows. As Luna looks over the plans with her discerning, inscrutable gaze, Clarke cups Bellamy’s knee under the table and squeezes.

 

Finally, Luna gives her assent and they step out of her apartments and into the glare of the setting sun. Bellamy blinks, his eyes adjusting, and then a pair of thin arms are around his shoulders and his favorite voice in the world is crying his name into his neck. He hugs her fiercely, holding her head to his chest and petting her hair, which she’s now wearing in a long braid down her back.

 

She’d fled Polis after the City of Light fell, heading first to the dropship, then to Lincoln’s old cave, still near enough to the outskirts of Arkadia that patrols kept scavengers from her doorstep. And from there, to Floukru. She’d had to leave her weapons behind, but by then, she’d hardly been able to touch them without feeling sick. She says that it’s been good for her, being far away from everyone, being alone, being quiet. Luna understood what she needed, Octavia says, and put her to work mending fishnets and patching sails. Menial work, sure, but work that let her think and be still. She’d snuck onto the fishing boat the first time—Luna says impatience is the hardest vice to break—but oh, she loves it. The open sea, the wind, the solitude, the work of it all.

 

She’s still telling them all of this, her words running together and on top of each other when she isn’t waving at friends or patting the heads of the small kids running around, when Luna climbs atop a table and calls out for their attention. Octavia falls dutifully quiet and turns her face to floukru’s heda. When Luna announces that floukru will be leaving the rig to join skaikru and the rest of the coalition on the Aplatchken mountaintops, high above the reach of the poison air that will burn them if they stay, Octavia’s expression shutters, then falls.

 

“They won’t take me back,” Octavia says, when Bellamy takes her hands in his own. “I killed Pike. They’ll hang me, Bell.”

 

“They won’t do that,” Bellamy says. “I promise.”

 

“ _We_ promise,” Clarke chimes in. “We won’t let that happen.”

 

Clarke butting in shakes Octavia out of her dark spiral. She blinks down at Bellamy’s hands, turns them so that the fading sunlight glints on his wedding ring. “What’s this?”

 

“Oh.” He clears his throat. Beside him, Clarke goes very still. “Uh. Clarke and I—we got married.”

 

Octavia blinks. “Married.”

 

“Not really,” Clarke blurts out, then backtracks. “I mean, we really are married. But--but it was to get pressure off. From the grounders, I mean. They all wanted to marry me. Well, not me—they wanted to marry Wanheda. And they kept sending ambassadors and envoys and they were getting in the way. And we’re on such a tight deadline, you know? So Bellamy and I…got married.”

 

She lets the last words drop as awkwardly as the rest of her explanation. About halfway through, her eyes had fallen from Octavia’s face to her own wedding ring. She twirls it around her finger, over and over. Her neck has gone a bit blotchy, the way it does when she’s stressed and worried. An urge to reach out and lace their fingers together strikes Bellamy.

 

But before he can, Octavia speaks up. “And you picked my brother,” she drawls, her eyes all narrow and sharp, “because you knew that he’d do whatever you told him to, right?” Clarke jerks back like she’s been slapped.

 

“Octavia,” Bellamy snaps. “Christ, we just got here.”

 

One incredulous look at his face gets his sister to mumble a reluctant apology. Clarke nods, just once. For the rest of their conversation with Octavia, Clarke stays quiet. She stays quiet while Octavia gives them a proper tour of the rig, and she stays quiet when they’re shown to their quarters. Octavia might not have known that the two of them were married, but whoever was in charge of preparing for their stay had been in the know, because only a single room with a double bed has been set aside for them.

 

They only have a few minutes of alone time before dinner, and Clarke spends it kneeling on the mattress, unpacking her bag onto the shelf over the bed. Quietly. She’s got a hard set to her mouth that means she’s thinking, and he thinks he knows what about.

 

“You alright?” he asks as he pulls his salt-crusted jacket off.

 

“I’m fine.” She glances over and her eyes immediately drop to where his shirt stretches over his shoulders. The flash of hunger in her eyes is welcome. He wishes they had a bit more than the fifteen minutes they were promised. She’s wearing her grey henley, the one that used to make him borderline unfit for duty back at the dropship even when she was nagging him and pissing him off most of the time. One of these days, he wants to get his hands up under it. Maybe even get her to unbutton it lower but keep it on while he fucks her on her back so he can watch the roll of her cleavage through the split in the fabric.

 

He readjusts his pants, then clears his throat. “O’s not great with change. She gets snappy, but—”

 

“I said I was fine,” she cuts him off.

 

Annoyance rises in his throat. She’s being evasive and secretive, the exact same way he’d acted towards her, the exact same thing that had pissed her off so much. Hadn’t she been paying attention during the lesson she’d set about teaching him? He opens his mouth to lay all that out, but the bell for dinner rings, ending his plan before he can carry it out.

 

And given how tense they all are, brittle kindling ready to explode at the slightest spark, that’s probably for the best.

 

* * *

 

Their timeline is so tight that Floukru doesn’t have time to come to terms with leaving the rig. They have to leave, and as soon as possible. Life at sea has always been unpredictable, though, so Luna’s people don’t shy away from jumping to task. They start packing up the necessities onto their skiffs: nets, fishing line, ropes, and cables can all be reused in the mountains; barrels of smoked fish will supplement the food stores for the winter; bags of harvested salt can preserve meat not yet hunted. Bellamy and Clarke don’t know much about fishing, so Luna sends them to the greenhouse to gather shovels and trowels.

 

And in the greenhouse, there are seeds.

 

Jars and jars of seeds, dried and carefully labeled in English. Corn. Peas. Tomatoes. Spinach. Clarke holds a jar of pole beans to her chest and starts crying. It’s not uncontrolled sobbing by any means, but her muffled sniffles catch Bellamy’s attention. He cups a hand around the back of her neck and gives her an encouraging squeeze while she takes a few deep breaths and swipes at her eyes.

 

“Sorry,” she mumbles, nodding at where he’d been packing the jars into a box. “You were busy.”

 

“Don’t apologize.” His own eyes had been stinging ever since he realized what they had found. “This stuff is important. More important than guns and bullets, honestly.”

 

“I never thought I’d see the day, Mr. Blake.” Her smile is small but wry, and he rolls his eyes and takes the next set of jars from the shelf. He hadn’t been lying through; he packs the seed jars into the straw-lined box with far more care than he’d ever given bullets or cans of gun oil.

 

Luna decides not to ferry over the casks of wine Floukru has fermented over the past few years. They’re too heavy and too large, and frankly, wine isn’t necessary for survival the way that blankets and cookery are. Instead, she orders them all cracked open. Wine flows into glasses, and floukru piles their plates high with all of the salted and smoked seafood they won’t be bringing to Mount Rogers. Luna lifts a wine glass to toast to their home that has served them all so well and when she’s finished, she snaps her fingers.

 

“Watch this,” Octavia murmurs, grinning, as a group of young men and women make their way to the center of the dining hall, their shoes clicking as they walk. A violin trills out some music, otherworldly in its twangs, and a drum picks up a rhythm. Together the instruments call to Bellamy’s mind something like…rolling green hills and lichened stone and a man’s low brogue, a voice Bellamy’d thought he’d long forgotten. Then, the dance starts. [Their ankles twist and flit in sync and the metal tacked to their shoes snap against the floorboards](https://68.media.tumblr.com/14c06f07bfe29624102fb4128057d9c9/tumblr_mfdoagRCHh1s167qro1_500.gif). Together, the floukru dancers stamp out a rhythm that twists and twines with the violin and the drum. They circle each other, fall in and out of line, arms tight to their sides even as their cheeks pinken and sweat beads on their upper lips.

 

When the dance finishes, the audience erupts in thunderous applause. Among the howls and hollers from their observers—Clarke and Bellamy included—the dancers bow. Luna offers them a round of drinks, delivered by the flock of girls that surround her at every moment. In a corner, a woman fiddles with a box, and then music fills the room once again. It’s from an electric speaker this time, a rare bit of pre-war technology that somehow, someway, still works here on Earth.

 

A wave of nostalgia sweeps over Bellamy. It’s been, what, six months? A year? Since he had last heard music like this aboard the Ark? It’s slow, crooning music that pulls couples onto the dance floor and sets them to swaying. Beside him, Clarke is watching them with a soft expression. Tonight, her hair is swept back and lit golden in the low light, and her small smile makes his heart skip a beat.

 

He knocks the dregs of his wine back and stands before he loses his nerve. “C’mon,” he says, holding his hand out to Clarke. “Let’s go dance.”

 

To her credit, she only arches a brow at him as she takes his hand. He leads her onto the floor and places his palm at the small of her back. They dance to the music, the both of them listening to the singer croon at them of love and moonlight. Slowly, slowly, Clarke’s perfect posture softens in the circle of his arms. She leans into him and they drift closer together. Their dancing turns more to swaying, and they find themselves looking over each other shoulders less and less, and at each other’s faces more and more. He catches himself lingering on her mouth, wanting to kiss her, taste the wine on her lips. But this close, he can feel the hitches in her breathing as she nearly starts talking once, twice, thrice, and so he waits. He guides the hand he’s been holding to his shoulder so that he can get both arms around her hips, and they dance, and he waits.

 

“Hey, Bellamy,” she finally says. Her arms tighten around his neck.  “I’m sorry…if I pressured you. Into marrying me, I mean. I thought it made sense. I was thinking about me, and how it would make my life easier. I guess I…assumed you wouldn’t mind so much. You weren’t dating anyone and I didn’t—I didn’t mean for anything to happen. I didn’t plan on any of…that.” Her cheeks are turning red, thinking about those hurried, gasping moments together. He hasn’t interrupted her, and she pushes on, the rest of her thoughts tumbling out of her mouth before she lets her doubt and fears stop her. “I like you a lot, Bellamy. I’ve already loved you, you know that right? But I like you this way, too. I love you this way. But I don’t want you to feel like you have to…feel the same. Or stay with me, really. I’d understand if you wanted a divorce. Or an annulment, really, since we probably committed fraud—”

 

“Clarke.” Her words are picking up speed, and he’s biting his cheek to hide his smile. “I love you, too.”

 

“Oh,” she blinks. “Oh.”

 

Still, her eyes dart across the room to where Octavia is bent over and talking to one of the young girls. He holds himself back from shaking his head at this lovely, transparent, obvious girl he knows and loves so well. He runs a reassuring hand down her back, his thumb tracing the line of her spine. “Octavia is very good at hitting you where she knows it’ll hurt. But that doesn’t mean that what she says is right.”

 

Her face snaps back to his. “But—she’s your sister.”

 

“And you’re my wife.” Clarke makes a queer noise in her throat, and she presses her face into his neck. [The alcohol has made his skin sing and buzz, and he can feel every brush of her body against his](https://68.media.tumblr.com/62c82f2c87ca7a5a1a83c6edb5a6c2a4/tumblr_o7jelkdS521v00mhbo1_500.gif). He tilts his head down to whisper in her ear. “I don’t want a divorce.”

 

“You’re sure?” The question breath ghosts across his skin.

 

He  pulls her closer, until they’re pressed together from shoulders to thighs. “I’m sure. I told you: I love you. I’ve loved you, and I love you.”

 

She tilts her head back, leaning into his grip on her waist. He likes it, likes how he has to pull her even closer to keep her from falling back. She lifts a hand and traces her fingers over his cheek, down to the scar on his lip, and to the dimple of his chin. “I love you, too.”

 

He ducks his head and kisses her fingers. “I know.”

 

Rolling her eyes, she pushes back at his face until he shakes away with a laugh.

 

The song changes and the beat shifts, changing the tempo of their feet. Tomorrow, they’ll leave the rig and head to Mount Rogers. They’ll climb to the summit and set up camps. They'll ration food and build rainwater collection systems. They’ll start clearing the forest and tilling the soil. They’ll prepare for Praimfaya and, most importantly, what will come after.

 

But that’s tomorrow, and tonight is still young.

 

* * *

 

 

_Fin._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading. If you enjoyed, please leave me a comment and let me know. <3


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